Calcium carbonate scaling in seawater desalination by ammonia-carbon dioxide forward osmosis: Mechanism and implications

Forward osmosis (FO) is an osmotically driven membrane process, where the membrane separates a draw solution (DS) with high salinity from a feed solution (FS) with low salinity. There can be a counter direction flow of salt (i.e., salt leakage) that may interact with the water flux through the FO membrane. For the first time reported, this study describes a new calcium carbonate scaling phenomenon in the seawater FO desalination process using ammonium bicarbonate as the DS. The scaling on the membrane surface at the feed side is caused by the interaction between an anion reversely diffused from the DS and a cation present in the FS, causing a significant decline of the water flux. The composition of the scaling layer is dominated by the solubility (represented as solubility product constant, Ksp) of salt formed by the paired anion and cation. Membrane surface morphology plays a crucial role in the reversibility of the scaling. If the scaling occurs on the active layer of the FO membrane, hydraulic cleaning (increasing crossflow velocity) efficiency to restore the water flux is up to 82%. When scaling occurs on the support layer of the FO membrane, the hydraulic cleaning efficiency is strongly reduced, with only 36% of the water flux recovered. The present study reveals the risk of scaling induced by the interaction of feed solute and draw solute, which is different from the scaling caused by the supersaturation in reverse osmosis and other FO studies reported. The scaling investigated in this study can occur with a very low solute concentration at an early stage of the FO process. This finding provides an important implication for selection of draw solution and development of new membranes in the FO process.